


The Person That You'd Take a Bullet for is Behind the Trigger

by Who_Needs_Reality



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 4x11 spec, Angst, Confrontations, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 20:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10861917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Who_Needs_Reality/pseuds/Who_Needs_Reality
Summary: “I couldn’thelp it,” she gasps, “I had nochoice--”“Then why the fuck am I here?” he explodes, a dam bursting, an avalanche cascading. “I wasn’t exactly sitting around demurely waiting for you to decide whether or not you wanted me alive,” he can see the barb land, see her recoil with the force of it, and somewhere, some part of him hates himself for it.“Youknowwhy,” she manages, like the words are being torn out from within her chest, one-by-one.He barks a short, disbelieving huff of laughter, and Clarke squeezes her eyes shut. “Right now,” he says, “I don’t know anything about you.”{4x11 spec: gun scene confrontation}





	The Person That You'd Take a Bullet for is Behind the Trigger

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in an hour and I low-key hate it but I haven't posted anything in so long (I promise I'm going to be more active now exams are over!!) and I wanted to bang something out because that promo gave me ~feelings~ and I needed to publish this before the episode. Basically, this is generally more catharsis for me than anything else, and also I am actually excited for an ep for once (MISTAKE) so...enjoy I guess.
> 
> Title is from "Miss Missing You" by Fall Out Boy because the metaphor became very very literal.

“Bellamy _stop_!”

He turns to stare at her and the flare of white-hot rage that shoots up his chest on seeing her hurts because _this_ , he realises, _this is what hate feels like_. It’s strange, how similar it feels to love, how it’s like someone took the little flicker of warmth that usually fills him every time he sees her, and then set it wild so that it threatens to burn him, burn them both. He ignores her and turns back to the door, eyes roving frantically across it as he searches for ways to open it.

“Bellamy, please.”

There’s a knob, the size of the steering wheels he saw in pictures of olden days ships he saw in pictures on the Ark’s records. It spans the whole door and he needs to turn it to open up; he grasps a spoke in each hand and starts to turn.

“ _Bellamy_.”

Clarke’s voice breaks, and he _has_ to turn to look at her, he always will when he hears her sound like that; even hatred won’t change that. And then he freezes, because it’s Clarke, eyes wide and frantic and pleading, but in front of her is the bleak black barrel of a gun. A gun that she’s holding.

“What are you doing?” he rasps, because he understands the phrases “Clarke” and “gun” and “threatening me” separately but no matter how much she hurts him they still don’t make sense together.

“What I have to,” she says, in the tremulous, trying-to-sound-resolved voice that a day ago, fuck, an _hour_ ago would have made his heart twist and sent him surging forward to try hold her, if he dared, “like always.” Her hands shake.

“Put down the gun, Clarke,” he says, his eyes never leaving her, his hands never leaving the door.

She purses her lips so hard they go white, disappear into her skin, but shakes her head. “I can’t let you do this,” she say, “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you can _let_ me do,” he spits, and she recoils, though her arms stay raised, “I’m doing my damnedest to keep my sister alive. _Like always_.” _Like always. Like I’ve always done and always will do. Like I thought you knew._

“Radiation levels are critical, Bellamy--”

“So you want me to leave my sister and Kane out there to get the full experience, that it? Raven and Monty too?”

“I couldn’t _help it_ ,” she gasps, “I had no _choice--_ ”

“ _Then why the fuck am I here_?” he explodes, a dam bursting, an avalanche cascading. “I wasn’t exactly sitting around demurely waiting for you to decide whether or not you wanted me alive,” he can see the barb land, see her recoil with the force of it, and somewhere, some part of him hates himself for it. 

“You _know_ why,” she manages, like the words are being torn out from within her chest, one-by-one.

He barks a short, disbelieving huff of laughter, and Clarke squeezes her eyes shut. “Right now,” he says, “I don’t know anything about you.”

“Bellamy--”

“I don’t know why you don’t care about your friends anymore, the friends you’d have died for. The friends you _killed_ for.”

“I’m doing this for them!” she’s shouting now, and her hands are shaking so badly he’s surprised the gun hasn’t fallen.

“Leaving Monty and Raven and Octavia to die in a wave of radiation is _for them_?”

“It’s for _humanity--_ ”

“Just _stop_ ,” he slams his palm against the railing so hard it reverberates, “stop acting like you think this is okay! These are your fucking _friends_ , Clarke, my _sister_. You can’t rationalize your way out of this, okay? I don’t care what Lexa, or Roan, or anyone else told you, _this is not who you are_. You’re not wanheda, you’re _Clarke_. You said it yourself--we don’t get to decide who lives or dies, not down here.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do!”

He laughs again, cold and humourless. “Did that scout just stumble across me in the streets?” he asked, “did you just get unlucky with this?”

Clarke staggers slightly, like he’s slapped her. “I couldn’t get to Kane and Octavia,” she all but whispers, “Octavia was in the conclave, and Kane was in the tower--”

“Where I should have been too,” he reminds her, “I should be there right now, waiting for a death you sent to me.”

“No,” she says, “ _no_ , Bellamy, I wouldn’t--”

“Do you know why I wasn’t?” he asks, pushing off the door and striding down the stairs, “do you know why I wasn’t in the tower where I was supposed to be?” He keeps walking, straight towards her, until the cold metal of the gun presses into his chest and Clarke’s ragged breaths shudder against his throat. “I was hunting down Echo,” he says, digging his nails into his palms, knowing the words he’s saying might kill him a little, going on anyway, “I was looking a spy who was _cheating_ in the conclave--”

“What--”

“Who betrayed people for her own sake and got our friends killed. I went out to stop the girl who  all but _killed my sister_.”

The gun clatters to the ground and Clarke claps her hands to her mouth with a ragged sob, shaking her head desperately. “Oh god,” she says, “oh god.”

The white-hot in his chest subsides as quickly as it flared up, and _there_ it is again, the twist of his heart, the stabbing pain that comes with the knowledge that Clarke, _Clarke_ is hurting. He swallows it down. Bending, he picks up the gun, offers it to her. “Shoot me,” he says gently.

Her eyes snap up to him.

“You’ll do whatever you have to, right? To save the world?”

She swallows, glances back at the gun like it has claws. Her eyes return to Bellamy’s face.

“Then shoot me. You can shoot me, Clarke, or you can let me go, because I’m not living another moment not doing what I have to save my sister.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, tears tracking jagged paths down her face, “I’m so so sorry.”

He shakes his head. “We’ve all got to make choices, Clarke, you know that. I already know what my decision is. All that happens now depends on whether I’m talking to _wanheda_ or Clarke fucking Griffin.” He refuses to look back at her as he makes his way up the staircase, refuse to let her see how badly he _wants_ , wants her to come back to him, wants her to _want_ to come back. He doesn’t look over his shoulder as he stamps up the stairs, doesn’t pause at all until her voice echoes through the room more sonorously than a whisper that hoarse has any right to.

“Wait.”

He pauses. _Don’t look_ , he wills himself, _not yet_.

“I’m not--you shouldn’t--you can go,” she says, and something inside him springs loose and floats upwards. “You can go. But I’m coming with you."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I doubt in the actual episode it'll be tied up this neatly (Clarke is a nightblood, nightbloods can deal with radiation, she can go out in the open etc etc) and I'm 99% sure Abby will be involved and Jake Griffin (and even Wells--LOL NO as if they'd ever acknowledge my boy Wells was Clarke's lifelong best friend I dream too big) will be invoked but I do what I want with my trash drabbles. Listen I actually think we might get fed some Quality Blorke Angst™ this week and that makes me hopeful and then I get mad at myself for being hopeful and now I'm a moltov cocktail of emotional instability which I'm using as my excuse for how this trash drabble turned out. 
> 
> Comments are like sprinkles of fairy dust!


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